Two of the top teams and two of the best players in Alabama squared off to open high school football action in the Yellowhammer State on Friday night. In the end, Auburn-bound running back
Armoni Goodwin rushed 17 times for 156 yards and three touchdowns in leading
Hewitt-Trussville (Trussville) to a 44-19 win at
Pinson Valley (Pinson).
Hewitt-Trussville came in No. 4 in the state preseason MaxPreps Top 25, while Pinson Valley was No. 12. The game featured a number of big plays and a lightning delay.
But the lightning and ongoing pandemic couldn't keep away a near capacity crowd to watch the state's top recruit, 6-foot, 175-pound receiver and cornerback
Ga'Quincy McKinstry from the home team lock horns with Goodwin, who missed all but the first three games of 2019 due to a knee injury.
Goodwin's first game back was an impressive one as he scored on runs of 10, 63 and 13 yards, while running mate
Sean Jackson added two scores as the Huskies outscored the home team 21-6 in the fourth quarter.
Armoni Goodwin rushed for 158 yards and three touchdowns in an impressive 2020 debut.
Photo by Joe Boyd
McKinstry, battling leg cramps the entire second half, was impressive as well, with two touchdown grabs, including a 5-yarder with 8:01 left to cut the lead to 30-19. But two of the Huskies four interceptions set up two more touchdowns down the stretch to win going away.
Both teams showed well, especially in the first half when McKinstry hauled in a 40-yard touchdown bomb from
Zach Pyron to give Pinson Valley a 13-7 early in the second quarter. It was the second touchdown pass of the half for Pyron, a transfer from Fyffe, where he led his team to back-to-back 15-0 seasons and 2A state titles.
Hewitt-Trussville came right back with Goodwin rambling over from the 10-yard line to give his team a 14-13 edge, a lead it would never relinquish.
Goodwin, a powerful and fleet 5-8, 190-pound back rushed for 1,458 yards and 10 touchdowns as a sophomore and was well on his way to better those numbers last year when he went down with the knee injury. He averaged a whopping 16.7 yards per carry and scored 10 touchdowns in those three games before being lost the rest of the season.
Goodwin had a lot of help Friday from Jackson, quarterback
Reagan Patterson and receiver
Blake Barlow.
Jackson hauled in a screen from Patterson in the first quarter, broke a couple of tackles and scored on a 25-yard touchdown to give the Huskies a 7-6 lead. Patterson, a sophomore, also connected with Barlow on a 43-yard strike late in the first half, extending the lead to 20-13.
A 35-yard field goal by
Ethan Wilson made it 23-13 when the game was halted due to lightning with 4:13 left in the third quarter. The Indians had a good chance to get back into the game immediately, but Pyron was intercepted in the end zone by
Omari Kelly.
Goodwin then put it away, capping a six-play, 99-yard drive with a 63-yard sprint up the middle for a score, making it 30-13 with 10:30 left in the game.
McKinstry, nicknamed Kool-Aid, needed more fluids and salts because he sat out much of the third quarter with leg cramps. He is the No. 18 recruit overall in the country by 247Sports, a five-star cornerback who has 27 college offers.
This was a rematch of last year's opener, a 40-33 Hewitt-Trussville victory at home when Goodwin rushed for 229 yards and four touchdowns.
Without Goodwin most of the season, Hewitt-Trussville finished 6-4 and failed to make the playoffs, while Pinson Valley went 10-3, losing in the 6A playoff semifinals to eventual champion Oxford.
A big crowd sat through a game that last well over three hours thanks in part to a 45-minute lightning delay.
Photo by Joe Boyd
